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The Antisemitism of DailyKOS: Or, Why Antitheism Isn't As Progressive As You Think [1]

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Date: 2023-06-03

This isn’t the story on left-wing antisemitism I’ve been working on, but right now it’s the one you’re going to get.



In the last ten days, there have been five articles and diaries posted here about antisemitism. They’re as follows:



--A diary I wrote about Roger Waters

--An AP article on Roger Waters

--Zemblan’s response to people defending Roger Waters, up to and including saying that he “sounded like” an antisemite but probably wasn’t

--Mikey Weinstein talking about right-wing antisemitism and the kind of BS he gets daily in the MRFF inbox

--Biden saying “enough is enough” and actually starting a task force to fight antisemitism



You might think you’re looking at a tempest in a teapot. But here’s the truth: antitheists and leftist-apologists on this website have gone out of their way in the last ten days to make it clear Jews aren’t welcome here, and a lot of other people are simply unwilling to confront antisemitism on the left.



Let’s go diary by diary.



First, my own. I go down into the comments and I find someone who literally goes point by point trying to explain “well if he meant it like this, then it’s not antisemitic,” “if he did that thing he didn’t do, it’s not antisemitic.” They literally ended by saying there was one action for which they could find no excuse—in other words, rather than listening to thousands of Jews saying “this is harmful, this is antisemitic, this is a problem,” they openly admitted they were making excuses for antisemitism. And then claimed that’s not what they were doing. I was also asked “your response to this statement?” when Rogers went “I’m not antisemitic, y’all are just whiners!” As if he’d actually admit what he’d done was wrong? Come on. We know better. The implication was that I was lying, because Rogers said so. And yet another person claimed it was okay for Waters to dress up as a Nazi and parade around a memorial site to over 8000 Jews deported to death camps, because it was “the ultimate in-your-face to Holocaust deniers.” I’m sorry, you’re a goy. You don’t get to make that decision for Jews. What Waters did was an absolute slap in the face.



Next, the AP article. Comments here are a little more measured, at least to start. But then we get somebody defending Waters for wearing a Nazi uniform because it was a “goof.” I don’t know how anybody so obsessed with WWII, who is famous enough to have somebody to check the laws for him, “goofs” by wearing an extremely illegal Nazi uniform, and I really don’t know why anybody would defend it as a “goof.” If he was parading around Alabama in a KKK hood would you call it a “goof,” or would you call it racism? Come on.



People continue to say “oh but he’s done it before, it’s okay” all the way down the comments. I literally cannot think of a stupider defense than this, but people keep saying it. And then, when that defense fails, “criticism of Israel isn’t antisemitic.” When it’s pointed out to them that this isn’t about Israel, they just fall back on excuses. A couple of people, confronted with direct quotes from Waters, straight-up say “he didn’t say that” and accuse Jewish members of DKos of being “hive mind” and lying. I mean….if a Black person says “this is racist and hurtful,” you say “I’m sorry” and don’t do it again. If disabled people say “this policy is harmful to disabled people,” you say “let’s fix it.” If women say “this is sexist,” most people (there are some pretty sexist people on DKos too) will say “ugh, that’s shitty, sorry, won’t do it again.” But if Jews say “this is antisemitic”….we’re lying? Hm. Interesting.



Now let’s talk about Zemblan’s response. They bring up the concept of Israel/Palestine as a stand-in for criticizing Jews openly and the concept that it 1) often but 2) not always is true (this is true, and in fact it popped up in the AP article comments when someone said the way “Jews” treat Palestinians is inhuman), and then discussed antisemitism on the left.



Everyone in the comments immediately turned it into a discussion on Israel/Palestine. Not one person, not one, looked in the mirror to confront themselves and ask “what biases do I have? Am I hurting or helping?” Not one spoke up in any kind of solid terms about confronting left-wing antisemitism.



And then Mikey’s diary. You’d think, given that he’s discussing open and virulent antisemitism sent by some dude named “KikeGirlRayper,” and states openly that he’s Jewish and receives this kind of hate on a daily basis, you’d think maybe people would just shut up and let a Jew speak, yes? You’d be wrong. He quoted part of the letter from KGR in his headline, and someone demanded he change it because “there are better ways to communicate your point.” I’m sorry, we see this shit every day. You’re privileged that you don’t, and if it makes you uncomfortable to see it, it fucking should. It should make you even more uncomfortable to demand we suffer in silence. There’s also an absolute genius in the comments claiming that calling for “death to all Jews” is and should be protected speech. And someone else who apparently felt the need to correct a Jewish friend because “it wasn’t just Jews who were hurt in the Holocaust.” They’re right, but why is it when Jews talk about an attempt to wipe us out that was so horrible, so virulent, so effective we had to coin the word “genocide” just to describe it, people just have to center the non-Jewish victims and shove the Jews aside? Why do I see this in almost every single leftist discussion of the Holocaust? Why are we not allowed to say “we were hunted, and tortured, and experimented on, and murdered; pregnant women were vivisected and their fetuses removed in front of their eyes to see what would happen; we were raped and enslaved and killed” without someone all-lives-matter-ing us? ESPECIALLY when a friend, apparently the child of Holocaust survivors, trusts you with his pain and his trauma? Why the absolute fuck are you going to say “well actually….”? And then someone else claims the point of the email was to intimidate all liberals and progressives. Not just Jews, not just the specific Jew to whom “Hitler was right” was sent, all liberals. Come on. Just admit you don’t see Jews as vulnerable people.



I’m not even going to get into the Biden article. I don’t think I could stomach it. But I am going to call out something that’s happened to me on all of these diaries, and others beside:



Antitheists being absolute antisemitic assholes.



So here’s how this works. I’ll be having a conversation, often not even with the antitheist in question. They’ll crash in to start yelling about how awful all religions are. I refute them….they say nothing for three or four days...and at the last possible minute before comments on the story close, they come back with the most vile shit known to man. I had one today I just lost rating abilities for a week over because he replied to me, and therefore we were in conversation, comparing the Torah to Mein Kampf. Yes, I’m serious. I was having a lighthearted conversation with someone about our young relatives’ bat mitzvahs and this dude blows in to say Jews are like Hitler. Another told me all religions condone incest and when I corrected him, holy hell.



So why the waiting period? I think I know.



They wait so nobody else will be looking at the story. Then they can say whatever they want and not get in trouble. I can’t flag them, because we’re in conversation. Nobody else is around to flag them, and so they get to tell me I believe in “Palestinian fairy tales” and refuse to acknowledge that Jews even exist because “Palestinian means something different” to them (yep, got that one today too!).



Left-wing antisemitism is real. It is ensconced right here on this site. Our fucking president is putting the country in the time-out corner for how it treats Jews and y’all are really up in here spewing this garbage. Even as Jewish members openly state they’ve all but left the site due to the antisemitism here, even as we find ourselves having to hide our Magen Davids and go to prayer under the eye of an armed guard, y’all are saying this shit, and turning a blind eye to this shit, and tacitly agreeing with this shit (I see all you reccers upvoting the people saying this shit, don’t think I don’t).



For shame, DailyKOS. Absolutely for shame.

Go look in your fucking mirror. In 2021, there were 2700 antisemitic hate crimes in the United States. There were eight anti-atheist hate crimes, and yet I routinely hear on here about how atheists have it worse than Jews. Look at those numbers again and go back to first-grade math before you ever, ever, ever say that shit to me ever again.



I don’t care if you’re not saying “death to all Jews” directly. When you say “all religion should be abolished,” you’re saying Jews shouldn’t exist. You might say nice things about George Soros, but it’s very clear how you feel about the six million Jews living in the US who aren’t George Soros.



And when you pull this “criticizing Israel isn’t antisemitic” in a conversation that had nothing whatsoever to do with Israel? You’re being antisemitic.



Now watch. I fully expect the comments here to be full of people either talking about Israel/Palestine and ignoring what I said, or yelling at me for saying “calling for complete abolition of religion is antisemitic.” I’m literally waiting for it.



I haven’t left this site yet. But as far as I can tell, there’s a whole bunch of supposedly-progressive people who really, really want me to...because they’d rather lose an ally than stop hating Jews.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/3/2173039/-The-Antisemitism-of-DailyKOS-Or-Why-Antitheism-Isn-t-As-Progressive-As-You-Think

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